April 1, 2014 –
Don’t be a victim of fraud: Shield your business against corporate identity theft

Thieves are fraudulently acquiring business identities at an alarming rate. Criminals may use your business identity to perpetrate a fraud against your business or someone you do business with. This type of scheme has been reported in more than half the states in the country.

No business is too small to be a target for thieves. Strategic methods have been developed to steal your business’s identity, but there are steps you can take to make your business a less appealing target to potential thieves.

Here are some tips to help protect against corporate identity theft:

1. File your annual paperwork in a timely manner. Thieves look for businesses that regularly file late or miss deadlines. To them, it’s a sign that you probably won’t notice if they manipulate your company information and otherwise take advantage of your lack of oversight.

1. Verify your business information on file with the secretary of state website. Thieves will file updates to your corporate records, making themselves an officer or director of your business to potentially:
   1. initiate the fraudulent sale of your business assets;
   2. conduct transactions or make purchases in your business’ name;
   3. open or access your business bank accounts; and/or
   4. open or access loans, lines of credit, and other credit accounts

1. Obtain a credit report for your business. Did you know that, unlike a consumer credit report, business credit reports can be obtained by anyone? Thieves may purchase your business’s credit report and then manipulate the file, fraudulently changing the information in order to deceive creditors or lenders as part of their business identity theft scheme. The credit agency verifies the fraudulent information changes against the fraudulent information filed with the secretary of state.

Additionally, business owners should monitor their accounts and bills, reporting any suspicious activity to the originating company. In some cases, you may be able to sign to receive notifications from your bank, creditors or service providers when your account information has changed, or certain limits have been reached.

Read the following recent news stories on the topic; visit businessidtheft.org for more information.

• Warning to business owners: Dentist has company dissolved & why it could happen to you (WPTV.com, 3/19/14)
• Corporate records: in the line of fire (Tampa Bay Business Journal, 2/7/14)

How Gunster can help

Gunster’s Entity Administration Service works as a fraud deterrent and is available to all corporate clients.

Once you sign up for Entity Administration Service, we will do the following on your behalf:

• Timely filing of annual reports
• Verification of updates to state records. If fraud is suspected, you will be notified immediately.
• Monitoring of a business’s state records

To learn more about our Entity Administration Service, please email [email protected] or call us in West Palm Beach at 561-804-4372.

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